Appeals court holds final session in Clearstream case

A Paris court heard on Thursday the final plea of public prosecutors, who decided to appeal former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's acquittal in the Clearstream scandal, in which he was accused of slandering President Nicolas Sarkozy.

AFP - Judges hear final arguments Thursday in the Clearstream affair, a political scandal in which France's ex-prime minister Dominique de Villepin is accused of smearing President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The final hearing was to start at 1:30 pm (1130 GMT) to wrap up the complex trial, which centres on a fake list of names that falsely implicated Sarkozy in kickbacks on arms deals with Taiwan.

Sarkozy had accused his bitter political rival Villepin of causing his name to be on the list.

The month-long appeals trial focussed on a web of murky claims and counter-claims about who in European defence company EADS, owner of Airbus, was responsible for the fake list, and whether Villepin could have prevented it.

Prosecutor Jean-Louis Perol said during the appeal trial that Villepin was guilty of "complicity by abstention" for failing to stop the false claims.

Perol said there was a "convergence of interests" between Villepin and Gergorin, the "instigator" of the false accusations.

Villepin's lawyers retorted that a person cannot be convicted for "not doing" something.

Prosecutors asked for a 15-month suspended jail term for Villepin.

The complex case dates back to 2004 and centres on a list -- later proved to be false -- of account holders at the Clearstream bank in Luxembourg who had allegedly received kickbacks from the sale of French frigates to Taiwan.

One name on the list was that of Sarkozy, then finance and interior minister under president Jacques Chirac. Sarkozy served alongside Villepin under Chirac, but the pair fell out over who should succeed him.

Opinion polls show that Villepin could get four to five percent of votes in next year's presidential election, potentially enough to split the vote on the right and derail Sarkozy's chances of getting through to the second round.

"I'm not afraid of anything and one isn't afraid of anything when one is innocent," Villepin said ahead of the trial.